Imagine, you are a housewife living in the late 1800s. You have to prepare a splendid meal because your husbands parents will be joining you for dinner, and you know your mother in law thinks you can't look after him well enough. Thank-goodness for Mrs Beeton! Your mother taught you to cook, but Mrs Beeton has given you so many splendid recipes, and you are sure you can find something in her book to impress even your mother in law!
When I took this Mrs Beeton Cookbook to show the children, they were fascinated. They are used to modern cookbooks whcih are all about glossy pages with beautifully styled food pictures and carefully listed, page long recipes. The Mrs Beeton was very different to this, with most recipes being a simple paragraph, and very few being illustrated at all, let alone in colour! They were also fascinated to see the types of things people cooked in the 'olden days'. There are many recipes in the book which use cuts which have almost disappeared, being used for mince and sausages instead of being sold, and also many for offal, or as the kids termed it 'the icky bits'.
The woman behind the Mrs Beetons books was called Isabella Mayson. She was born in 1836 in London, the eldest of a staggering 21 children. In 1856, at the age of 20, she married the book publisher Samual Beeton, becoming 'Mrs Beeton'. At first, between 1859 and 1861, she wrote a monthly supplement for 'The Englishwomen's Domestic Magazine' but in 1861 they were compiled into her first book, now known as Mrs Beetons Book Of Household Management. Its original title was rather longer:
"The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort"
This is only one of several books she wrote though, and she made a huge contribution not only to cooking, but even to how cookbooks are written. She was the first to put a list of ingredients at the start of her recipes, as we do today, and also included cooking times, which was not standard at the time. She also controversially believed that germs existed and tried to encourage cleanliness. Her books are some of the most popular cookery and household management books ever to be published. They were massively influential, and for many years nearly every household would have had at least one of her books. People assume that she was a middle aged, if not elderly lady, drawing on a vast storehouse of knowledge in her books. This wasn't the case though. She died when she was only 28 years old, having contracted puerperal fever when she had her 4th child.
